[Board] Update on Directors & Officers Liability Insurance renewal

[Cameron Shorter]

Daniel,
Level of insurance might effect the duties we include we decide to 
include in the "OSGeo Ambassador" role. I'd be interested to know if 
certain roles allocated to ambassadors (or other volunteers) will 
increase our insurance costs.

On 15/05/2012 11:24 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Board,
>
> As some of you know, it's this time of year where we need to renew our 
> Directors & Officers Liability Insurance. I have been going back and 
> forth in the last few weeks with our broker filling forms and 
> answering various questions, and they got back to me yesterday with a 
> quote with a premium 5 times higher than in previous years. We used to 
> pay 1,000$ (+300$ broker fee) and the new quote is for 5,571$ (+300$ 
> broker fee) which the insurer says is due to additional information 
> regarding the organization's volunteers.
>
> That's quite an increase in price, and seem quite high for what we 
> need and for the budget of our organization.
>
> Indeed, one of the questions that they asked was: "The Underwriter 
> needs to know the number of volunteers you are using and needs it 
> documented on the renewal application for rating purposes."
>
> I haven't checked with them yet but my guess is that my answer to this 
> question (copied below) was a bit too inclusive and they are trying to 
> include a few hundred volunteers in the coverage, which is not what we 
> need.
>
> After discussion off-list with some of you, I will try to talk to our 
> broker today about restricting coverage to directors and officers, 
> which is 9 directors on the board of directors, 8 committee chairs, 
> and 20 software project chairs. (The committee and project chairs are 
> officers, when acting in an official capacity they are acting on 
> behalf of OSGeo.)
>
> Hopefully that will help bring the premium back to a more reasonable 
> amount. I'll keep you posted.
>
> Daniel Morissette
> OSGeo Treasurer
>
>
> FYI, my response to their question about the number of volunteers:
>> """
>> How do we define a volunteer? Where do we draw the line between 
>> volunteer and regular community member? Do we count only those who 
>> are elected or appointed by the foundation to provide a service 
>> requested by the Foundation, or does this include anyone contributing 
>> to the cause, committees and projects of the foundation from time to 
>> time?
>>
>> To give you an idea, our structure includes:
>>
>> - Board: 9 seats (currently 8 until next election)
>>
>> - Charter members: 125 elected charter members. Their main role is to 
>> elect the board and elect future charter members (charter membership 
>> is increased by 10% each year). A large part of those individuals 
>> also tend to also be involved in various committees or software 
>> projects of the foundation.
>>
>> - Committees: we have 8 committees (e.g. marketing, incubator, 
>> conference, etc.)... each with a chair appointed by the board and 
>> between 5 and 20 elected members who work as part of the committee
>>
>> - Software projects: we have 20 software projects, each with their 
>> own "steering committee" with 5 to 10 members, and the steering 
>> committee chair appointed to respond to the board on behalf of their 
>> project. Each software project has between 5 and 30 developers 
>> contributing their time in the form of source code, documentation, 
>> etc from time to time.
>>
>> - Local Chapters: Local communities in various cities or countries of 
>> the world can create local chapters. I do not have the exact count 
>> right now, but it is probably in the range of about 30 local 
>> chapters. The chair of each local chapter is appointed by the board 
>> to respond to the board on behalf of their chapter.
>>
>> Note that several people such as myself are involved at several 
>> levels (e.g. members of multiple committees and software projects)
>>
>> So where should we draw the line on who is a volunteer and who is not?
>> """
>
>
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-- 
Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Solutions Manager
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

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